Misfits
by Meiran Chang
Summary: A freak electric storm hits New Directions as they cross the parking lot to Regionals, changing their lives forever. Misfits fusion; Quick, Finchel, TBD, TBC.
1. Chapter 1

Black clouds smear across the horizon, swallowing the blue sky and the sun. It's Tina who first notices, with a sharp, sudden, "What _is_ that?"

Artie frowns upwards suspiciously, rolling to a stop right there in the middle of the enormous parking lot to eye the unnatural phenomena. He opens his mouth, eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

Lightning snaps across the cloud-swollen atmosphere, startling flashes of electric white against the dark. The storm skitters along the sky like ten thousand roaches, carapaces throwing off sparks. Mr. Schuester says slowly, with an uncomfortable look up, "Guys, I'm gonna need all of you to get moving, I don't think we want to be out here when this one hits."

But quickly, too quickly, the hail starts, and Quinn shrieks as a ball of ice the size of Artie's wheelchair slams onto the roof of a nearby car. Puck's there instantly, covering her as she cringes back, and Mike and Brittany and Santana are already peeling ahead, and the parking lot fills with the sounds of alarms as enormous balls of ice slam into car after car. Finn is pulling Rachel along; she loses a shoe, and Finn nearly yanks her arm off to keep her from going back for it. Santana and Brittany are a blur of movement linked by their hands, Brittany throwing tortured looks over her shoulder. Santana never looks back.

There's a shout as Kurt falls behind, staggered by a glancing impact from a smaller ball of hail. Mercedes hauls him up, reeling, to his feet, drags him with her, and then she screams as Matt is knocked to the asphalt in front of her, bloody fragments of ice round his head like a splintered halo. Mr. Schuester runs back to where Matt lies still, shouting, "Keep moving, keep moving!" Tina is pushing Artie's wheelchair so fast he has to hold on to the arm of it with one hand to keep from pitching out of his seat, holding his other arm above his head protectively.

And then the lightning snaps again, and each fork finds a target. Time lingers, slows, stills. Electricity shoots through blood. All of them feel it, the twisting tendrils of energy corkscrewing through their bodies, stabbing through their veins. Muscles clench, hearts squeeze and swell and skip beats, and lightning ricochets through the hollows in their bones, arcs through their brains, sparks through their neurons. They're knocked to the ground like dolls flung to the floor in a tantrum.

Time strolls on, walks by. Leaves them behind.

Mr. Schuester sits up, reaches out, lifts a bloody hand in horror from the back of Matt's head. Mercedes looks like she's about to be sick, the hem of her dress fraying and torn, lower lip trembling as she stares mutely between Mr. Schuester and Matt's unmoving body. Kurt is curled in a small ball nearby, though he pushes himself up, wincing, bringing a hand up to his shoulder.

Quinn is gasping harsh breaths, her arms around the swollen mound of her stomach. Puck is holding her hard, his broad back like a shield, as though they were thrown to the ground that way. Rachel's legs are scraped raw below the gold-and-black of her Regionals dress, but she staggers to her feet, frantically pulling Finn up. Finn stumbles as he rises, shaking his head as though dazed. Mike, Santana and Brittany, who have made it the farthest, jog back.

"We've got to get Matt to the hospital," Mercedes sobs, and Mike's face drains when he gets close enough to see. The skies are as blue as they have ever been, the clouds as fluffy white.

Puck shouts with a hard stare over at the rest of them, "Quinn, too!" as Mr. Schuester gets out his phone. Quinn is gritting her teeth, tears in her eyes, doubling over.

Regionals will have to wait.


	2. Chapter 2

Labor hits hard, harder than that time she fell off the top of the pyramid when some idiot freshman buckled and sent them all toppling, harder than the time she pulled her hamstring at cheerleading camp, harder than the time during summer vacation when she and her sister were nearly pulled under the ocean by a huge wave. All the pleasure she thought she'd experienced at the moment of conception is as _nothing_ compared to the pain.

New Directions splits up at the hospital, Mercedes and Puck with Quinn, everyone else off to Matt's bedside. There's some noise made about Kurt's shoulder, too, but by that point the nurses are making Quinn stand up from the wheelchair, and it takes both Puck and Mercedes to keep her on her feet and walking. Quinn keeps looking around for her mom, asks Mercedes to call the house phone, then the cell phone, but no one picks up.

Her mother won't be here for the birth of her granddaughter. Her mom isn't going to be here for her at all.

While Puck and Mercedes change into scrubs, the nurses help Quinn into a gown and onto the bed. Quinn can't stop crying, desperately afraid (she can't control the way her body is tearing itself apart, she can't stop this baby from coming) and furious in her desolation (she'd thought her mom would at least be here for this much, damn her).

And it all hurts, great tearing rending pains all through her heavy stomach and in her private parts (which aren't remotely private anymore since she has to spread her legs painfully wide and let strangers stick their heads in, and she feels so much resentment she's almost choking on it).

Her eyes roll up to the ceiling in desperation as contractions seize her body with barely any rest in between. Quinn squeezes her eyes shut, her sobs raw, scraping through her throat. She struggles to breathe, huge gasps for air as she feels things shifting in her abdomen and lower, the baby moving, the doctor's encouragements, pain that feels like it will never, ever end.

The doctor is telling her to push, and Quinn tries, screaming, swallowing not enough air in between contractions that won't let up. Puck is hovering near her legs without speaking, his eyes huge, and she fucking _hopes_ he's looking, she _hopes_ he sees what he's _done_ to her because _he_ was too stupid to pull out. She glares at him, and the only words she's been able to speak since the damn storm threw her into labor are a chanted, "You suck, you suck, you _suck!_" as Mercedes tells her to breathe. Quinn tosses her head back against the pillow, her teeth clenched as she pushes hard.

The baby is crowning. Pain tastes like metal, shoots through her like the lightning. The doctor is entreating her to breathe, too, Mercedes is telling her the baby's coming, Puck is silent but his eyes are still wide as he watches from a safe distance. Quinn surges up over her distended abdomen, collapses back down again, cries disconsolately for her mom, cries disconsolately in general, and just as she's about to ask for some of their mythical pain drugs, the pain stops.

Instantly Quinn tries to sit up, but they take her baby off to be wiped off and cleaned up. She's within two seconds of pitching a Fabray fit when one of the nurses, beaming like a saint on a card, lays her daughter down beside her. Quinn melts with relief, a smile working its way through the muscles of her face like it has a right to be there as she looks down at the baby, _her_ baby.

She reaches out to rest a hand on her baby, _her baby's_ small pink chest, and gasps. Everything seems to come into focus, the sharp antiseptic smell of the hospital room, the striations of gold and green in her daughter's enormous, doe-like eyes, her baby's impossibly soft skin, even the tiny, fluttering patter of her heart, loud as raps against a door. Puck's gloved hand curls on her baby, _their_ baby's chest, the latex just barely touching Quinn's hand, and Quinn feels every molecule of the glove sliding against the cells of her skin. She can see the individual hairs in Mercedes' weave, hear the rustle of her Regionals dress against the scrubs, hear footsteps down the hall, all with the same intensity as she feels her baby's chest rise and fall with tiny, steady breaths.

In confusion Quinn's hand twitches up, and the overwhelming awareness of everything subsides. Puck's eyes meet hers.

Emotions tumble through her, battering her back and forth in waves. She feels so in love she could weep with it, or shout with it. She's so in love it hurts her physically like a punch to the heart, leaving the muscle bruised and aching. She wants nothing more than to sweep Beth into her arms and hold her close, shield her from this whole fucked-up world, promise to be there forever, and never, ever leave her like her father did, never leave her that devastated and alone because that's not what fathers do, and she might be just as shit at fatherhood as she is at everything else, but she'll figure it out, she'll make it work if she just gets the chance. Her hands itch with the urge to pick Beth up, but she can't, she shouldn't, they're just going to give her up anyway, right? Even though she loves Beth more than words can say, and even though she loves Quinn more than she would have thought possible—

Quinn's brow furrows with confusion; Puck looks back down at their baby, his eyes soft and warm, and the tsunami of feeling vanishes, leaving Quinn wrecked and small. She looks back down at their daughter as well, tightening her hand around their baby's little fingers, shuddering as her senses sharpen so fast and so acutely that she can see the bright shine of tears in Puck's eyes.


End file.
